CSA Blog Entry 3/4 Ethan Hughes

One-to-one tutorial for project idea:
After receiving feedback from both my course leader Heike and our client for this project Gabor, I then began developing my idea so that it would have a more direct focus on what our client Gabor found most interesting about my original idea pitch. Knowing that Gabor liked the idea of shooting white 3D printed sculptures on a white background, I began looking through all the rooms in the CSA building to see if I could find any 3D printed objects. After searching, I was fortunate enough to locate some 3D printed sculptures sitting on the shelves in some of the rooms and then following Gabor’s advice, I met one of the tutors on the Architecture course who teaches the students how to make 3D prints. After talking to the tutor about what my project was about, he then showed me some of the 3D items that he had produced. after further discussion, he gave me permission to use these sculptures for my project.
Following on from the advice from both Architecture tutors and students, I took a look into the departments storage room containing the previous works from current 2nd year, 3rd year and post-graduate students. Fortunately, after thoroughly looking through almost all the 3D works in the room I was able to accumulate this large quantity of white 3D printed objects. Once collected I talked to Gabor about gaining permission to take the selected sculptures away from the Canterbury campus and take them to the Rochester campus so that I could begin shooting them in one of the studios, to which Gabor agreed.
Following on from Gabor’s advice of looking into Sanaa Architecture, I was fortunate enough to find the work of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, along with the work of Alejandro Arevena. With both of these works I looked at the use of lighting and perspective layout of these images so that I would have a better understanding of how I could possibly photograph my work in this kind of style.
Once I had collected all the 3D prints that I had located and once I had access to one of the studios, I began to experiment with both lighting and layout to see what would be best for my idea. Following on from the feedback from both Heike and Gabor to try and get the images white on white, I decided to use some white LED lighting to illuminate my work. Whilst shooting I experimented with the angling of the light and the perspective of the work, ranging between portrait and landscape, from shooting the objects in full to just shooting a certain aspect of the work.
After these were completed, later in the week I had a one to one tutorial with Heike explaining how my work was going and what the images were currently looking like. After looking through these image Heike explained that how by only using a single form of lighting is good for the object being taken, but it doesn’t help with the illumination of the backdrop as in my images the backdrop ranged from grey to very dark grey. Heike explained that in order for me to get the white on white effect desired, I should use more than just one single form of lighting and advised that I should put more of a distance between the sculptures and the backdrop, so that they can be lit individually. Doing this would then create an even white tone on both pieces of work.
Heike then reviewed the wide range of different perspectives that I had experimented with on this first shoot, and had advised for me to photograph the sculptures in a close-up perspective, so that the images would only show certain parts. Heike explained the reasons why she believed this would be best for my work was because it would then tie into part of my previous idea of trying to bring these 3D models into the real world. She believed that if these images were to be taken with a closer perspective it would then trick the viewer into having to guess the actual size of the sculpture. Further reasons were that when if this perspective of the work were to be teamed with the idea of shooting white on white, it would then give the work a certain ambiguity. By doing this it would leave the sculptures with a certain mystery to them, thus attracting a viewer’s attention to try and work out their meaning with the limited amount of information that is being presented. After receiving this feedback, I then had a clearer understanding of what my work should be based and how I should photograph my work to achieve a certain ambiguity in the end result.